The presidents of Iran and Pakistan marked the start of Pakistani construction on a much-delayed gas pipeline on Monday, Iranian media reported, despite U.S. pressure on Islamabad to back out of the project.

Dubbed the "peace pipeline", the $7 billion project has faced repeated delays since it was conceived in the 1990s to connect Iran's giant South Pars gas field to India via Pakistan.

Fifty one people have died since Saturday after drinking homemade alcohol, most of them in the Libyan capital Tripoli, with more than 300 others suffering from alcohol poisoning, the health ministry said on Monday.

The consumption and sale of alcohol is banned in the North African country, even though it is available on the black market.

In a statement on its website, the ministry said 38 people had died in Tripoli and another 13 had died while on their way to Tunisia for treatment.

The U.S. Treasury is imposing sanctions against North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank, the country's main foreign exchange institution, for its role in supporting Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction program, President Barack Obama's national security adviser said on Monday.

In a speech to the Asia Society in New York, the top White House aide, Tom Donilon, also said China should not conduct "business as usual" with North Korea while Pyongyang threatens its neighbors.

Al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for killing 48 Syrian soldiers and state employees in Iraq last week, saying their presence proved collusion between the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Unidentified gunmen last week attacked a convoy of Syrians who had fled across the border into Iraq from a Syrian rebel advance, and were being escorted back home through the western province of Anbar, Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland.

North Korea condemned a threatened U.N. investigation into its alleged human rights abuses on Monday and denounced a U.N. report as "faked material ... invented by the hostile forces, defectors and other rabbles".

The U.N. Human Rights Council is likely to back a call by Japan and the European Union to set up a "Commission of Inquiry" later this month, meaning that the isolated Asian state will face much closer scrutiny.

The Jordanian government will do everything possible to ensure radical cleric Abu Qatada is given a fair trial "because the eyes of the world will be on them", judges at the Court of Appeal in London have been told.

Lawyers for Home Secretary Theresa May made the claim as they launched the latest attempt to have the 52-year-old preacher deported to Jordan to stand trial on terrorism charges.

Google Glass isn't even on the market yet but a Seattle dive bar has already banned them from its users ever stepping foot inside.

The 5 Point Café posted a sign for its patrons this week reading that 'a** kickings will be encouraged for violators' of their new rule while mutually boasting of being the first establishment to ban them in the city.

Bar owner Dave Meinert says his decision is done half-jokingly for a reaction but half for privacy as well.

The New York Stock Exchange is readying plans to be able to operate without human traders in case another disaster, such as Superstorm Sandy, forces the shutdown of its historic trading floor in downtown Manhattan.

NYSE Euronext (NYX.N) is preparing to submit details of the plan to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to the report, which cited people involved in the preparations.

If activated, the plan would represent the first time the 221-year-old exchange would rely entirely on computer systems, without the oversight of floor-based traders, the paper said.

Astonishing new pictures have given a glimpse of what life is really like inside Guantanamo Bay - from the prison library where car magazines and films are available to the Halal meat served for dinner. The images of the prison camp, which is responsible for housing and feeding prisoners who have been captured in the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere since the September 11, 2001 attacks, shed a new light on human life in the camp where inmates are given a daily choice of vegetarian, fish or 'bland' meals.

Two U.S. Navy veterans are joining a federal lawsuit against the Tokyo Electric Power Company filed by fellow sailors who say the Japanese power company mislead them about potential dangers after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Quartermasters Jaime Plym and Maurice Enis are the latest two military service members to blame the nuclear power plant meltdown for making them sick.

The two say they were afflicted with multiple illnesses, including repeated cases of bronchitis, strange lumps and other ailments.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai hijacked US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel's debut visit to the region yesterday by accusing America of conspiring with the Taliban.

A day after two Taliban bombings killed 17 people, Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of colluding to convince Afghans that foreign forces were needed beyond 2014, when NATO is set to wrap up its combat mission and most troops withdraw.

'Those bombs that went off in Kabul and Khost were not a show of force to America. They were in service of America. It was in the service of the 2014 slogan to warn us if they (Americans) are not here then Taliban will come,' Karzai said in a speech.

South Korea and US forces have launched an 11-day land and sea exercise, in the face of North Korean protests that such “sabre-rattling” could lead to military confrontation.

Exercise Key Resolve, the second phase of the allies’ annual war games, went ahead as planned on Monday and will involve 13,500 troops. The war games have sparked angry rhetoric from Pyongyang, which also condemned new UN sanctions imposed in response to its recent rocket launch and nuclear device test.

“It is the US imperialists’ trite method of aggression to tighten sanctions and escalate the moves to stifle [North Korea] militarily,” state media said on Sunday.

One in four Germans would be ready to vote in September's federal election for a party that wants to quit the euro, according to an opinion poll published on Monday that highlights German unease over the costs of the euro zone crisis.

Germany's mainstream parties remain solidly pro-euro despite grumbling over bailouts of countries such as Greece. A German taboo on nationalism, rooted in atonement for the crimes of the Nazi era, has helped to muffle eurosceptic voices.

But the poll conducted by TNS-Emnid for the weekly Focus magazine showed 26 percent of Germans would consider backing a party that wanted to take Germany out of the euro and as many as four in 10 Germans in the 40-49 age bracket would do so.

Europe has spent hundreds of billions of euros rescuing its banks but may have lost an entire generation of young people in the process, the president of the European Parliament said.

Since the region's debt crisis erupted in Greece in late 2009, the European Union has created complex rescue mechanisms to prop up distressed countries and their shaky banking sectors, setting aside a total of 700 billion euros.

But little has been done to tackle the devastating social impact of the crisis, with more than 26 million people unemployed across the EU, including one in every two young people in Greece, Spain and parts of Italy and Portugal.

That crippling level of unemployment has led to protests and outbreaks of violence across southern Europe, raising the threat of full-scale social breakdown, including rising crime and anti-immigrant attacks that can further rattle unstable governments.

Syrian warplanes bombed the shattered Baba Amr district in the central city of Homs on Monday, a day after rebels made a surprise push into their former bastion, which had been in army hands for a year.

The communally mixed city of Sunni Muslims and Alawites, the minority sect that has dominated Syria since the 1960s, has been a major battleground in a two-year-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad that has claimed about 70,000 lives.

This one is straight out of the sit back and hold on to your hat category; according to a paper written in 1976, there is a buried volcano in Southeast Louisiana. This CANNOT BE the SAME part of Louisiana that is now being impacted by the dreaded Louisiana Sinkhole in Assumption Parish could it? You won't believe this! From a 1976 paper done for the Gulf Coast Association Of Geological Societies, Volume XXVI, 1976 by Jules Braunstein and Claude E. McMichael we get "Door Point: A Buried Volcano In Southeast Louisiana." Is THIS why BP is so concerned about Volcanoes all of a sudden? Check out the map below of what the Earth and America looked like during the Late Cretaceous Age when this buried volcano was last active. For all those who doubt this report, the original source can be found here.http://beforeitsnews.com/earthquakes/2013/03/a-volcano-buried-in-se-louisiana-door-point-a-buried-volcano-in-southeast-louisiana-2452096.html

A teenage boy has admitted possessing explosive chemicals and bomb-making books and diagrams.

The 16-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to two terror charges and another offence at a hearing at Birmingham Magistrates' Court today.

He admitted possessing explosive substances and a host of literature including a book on how to make the explosive Semtex.

The boy, who was arrested at his home in Northamptonshire, in February last year, admitted possessing explosive substances, namely sulphur powder and potassium nitrate, between January 1 2012 and February 26 2012.

New York is facing a deadly meningitis outbreak that is targeting gay men, many of which are HIV-positive. The city’s health department said several gay men have been found dead in their homes, and is urging people to immediately get vaccinated.

“Since August 2010, we’ve detected 12 cases of this very specific strain but what we’re most concerned about is that in the past four weeks there have been four cases and one of those cases has died,” Deputy Commissioner for Disease Control in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Dr. Jay Varma, told CBS affiliate 1010 WINS.

All of the recent bacterial meningitis cases have involved HIV-positive gay men who have had close contact with nose or throat discharges from an infected person. The New York Health Department initially issued a warning about the bacterial meningitis for HIV-positive men, but have since changed that warning to apply to all gay men. There have been 17 cases of bacterial meningitis in New York since 2012 and 22 cases since 2010, seven of which were fatal.

A student at Cal Poly Pomona has become infected with tuberculosis and campus officials are alerting the 375 students and 20 faculty who may have had repeated contact with the student to get a TB skin test, campus officials said on Friday.

Students can receive free TB testing through Student Health Services.

Priority will be given to those who are contacted directly. Faculty and staff can receive testing through their regular health care provider.

A small makeshift bomb exploded at a Greek courier company in Athens on Sunday, smashing windows but causing no injuries, a Reuters witness and police officials said.

The explosion damaged some vehicles parked outside the local firm and caused minor damage to several neighboring buildings. Police officials said the bomb consisted of at least five gas canisters and some explosive material.

North Korea has cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea as it escalates its war of words against Seoul and Washington in response to a military drill in the South and U.N. sanctions imposed for its recent nuclear test.
The North had threatened to cut off the hotline on March 11 if the United States and South Korea did not abandon their joint military exercise.

The Red Cross hotline is used to communicate between Seoul and Pyongyang which do not have diplomatic relations.

"We called at 9 a.m. and there was no response," a government official from South Korea said. The line is tested each day.